


missing pieces

by expectopatronuts



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Break Up, hurley is sad and that's pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25714738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/expectopatronuts/pseuds/expectopatronuts
Summary: Up until that point, Hurley’s life had been loud and fast and full of laughter. Now, with Sloane gone, all of it seemed frozen, the cold draining everything away and leaving only a slow, quiet devastation.
Relationships: Hurley/Sloane (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	missing pieces

**Author's Note:**

> the hurley we see in petals to the metals is DEPRESSED and here's why

Up until that point, Hurley’s life had been loud and fast and full of laughter. Now, with Sloane gone, all of it seemed frozen, the cold draining everything away and leaving only a slow, quiet devastation.

It had been weeks now, and still Hurley didn’t really know what had happened. Sloane had tried to explain how all of it made sense, but it didn’t. To Hurley, it all boiled down to the fact that Sloane thought there was something out there that was worth more than what they had together, and this she couldn’t begin to understand. For Hurley there was no question of just giving up something like that, there was no choice, there wasn’t even the possibility of a choice—she could just as easily detach her own legs, and she would have sooner done that if it had come to it.

But Sloane had chosen, and she’d left, and she’d left Hurley holding that thing that belonged to both of them, that ran between them, that they were supposed to be shaping together. And Hurley held it, but she couldn’t do anything with it on her own, and instead she felt everything she still had unraveling slowly inside her chest and seeping out of the wound that had ripped her in half and pooling at her feet, barely a shadow of so many things left undone and so many words left unsaid.

At night, alone in her bed, Hurley indulged in fantasies. Sloane coming back, telling her leaving had been a terrible mistake. Sloane never having gone, making breakfast for the both of them. Sloane always there beside her, as they won their next race together and the next one after that, too.

It wasn’t a particularly healthy coping mechanism, she knew, but it was better than the alternative—remembering every word, every gesture, every laugh, every moment, this and this and this and everything they had shared from the very beginning until the very end. There was so much of it; so, so much of it, and Hurley lay awake wondering _how does one let go of all this_ and feeling every bit of it like shrapnel embedded deep inside her chest, hurting with a sharp, cutting pain every time she moved and hurting with a blunt, steady ache whenever she stayed still.

At first she had tried, she had reached out to friends, she had stayed busy. But after a while she had realized that, no matter what she did, she did it thinking of Sloane, of what she would say when she showed her, or how she would laugh when she heard. And she realized that, no matter who she told, there were no words for what she felt, and nobody seemed to understand.

 _It’ll be fine_ , they said, but Hurley knew it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be fine because she loved Sloane, she loved her and she couldn’t stop loving her and she was scared that she never would, that the wound would never truly heal and that the things she might have done and the words she might have said and the hopes she might have had would keep pouring out of her forever and falling to the ground because Sloane wasn’t there to pick them up.

And she didn’t understand why Sloane wasn’t there, why she had chosen not to be there, _how_ she could have chosen not to be there if she loved her. Because she chose to believe that much was true, that Sloane hadn’t lied to her about that, she would never have, but she still couldn’t help but wonder, when she lay alone in bed staring up at the dark, whether maybe it had been somehow _less_ for her. Because if it hadn’t, if Sloane had felt everything Hurley was feeling, then she truly could not think of anything that might have been enough to make her throw it all away.

To make her choose to throw it all away. Because Sloane had _chosen_ this, but Hurley hadn’t, and she didn’t want it, and nonetheless she had it and it was breaking her heart and ripping her in two. And it wasn’t just that her heart was breaking, it was that pieces were missing because she had given them to Sloane with the flowers and the kisses and the dinners and the notes and every other gesture that she could think of, because Hurley wasn’t good with words—still, she had tried to say it all, because otherwise it would choke her—but she had hoped that Sloane would understand that those gestures meant _this is all I can do right now, but for you, my love, I would do anything._

But now, none of it mattered, and it didn’t matter how good Hurley was at fixing things, because it was the same as with the battle wagon—she needed all of the pieces, and she didn’t have them, and there was nothing she could do except stand alone in her garage, and cook dinner alone, and go to bed alone, until eventually that proved too painful and she gave up, first on the garage, then on sleep, then on dinner.

When the voice in her head spoke, said things like _you’re pathetic_ and _how could she want you_ , she merely agreed, and when the other voice in her head spoke and said things like _you can’t go on like this_ she also agreed and thought that that was just fine, because she didn’t want to go on at all. She didn’t want to go on if it meant she wasn’t by Sloane’s side every step of the way, but that path was blocked, and no matter how much she pushed, the boulder wouldn’t move, and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see another way to get to where she wanted to go, so she just sat down and hoped that whatever power Sloane had found was enough to end the boulder and the mountain and the path and everything else, too.

When she managed to sleep, she dreamt. By now, she had dreamt of Sloane five times. She had dreamt of kissing her, and of saying goodbye, and of being reunited. When she didn’t sleep, she cried, first slow and bitter tears which she didn’t make any effort to wipe away, and then violent sobs with clenched fists, and finally a hollowness in her chest that felt terrifyingly empty.

Sometimes, after the crying, there came hope, and that was worst of all. Despite everything, there was always a sliver of hope that survived it all, just enough to make her keep holding on to the thing Sloane had left her with, even though she couldn’t do anything with it, because maybe someday, somehow, they would return to it, and she didn’t want to risk setting it down.

So she stood there, in her garage, and held it to her chest, and pretended she was hugging Sloane after winning a race, or that she was kissing her goodnight, or that she could hear her footsteps coming down the stairs and that anytime now she would kick the door open and smile and everything would be put right again.

Except none of that happened, and Hurley was still alone, and her world was still drained and frozen. And the cold had started to numb her, and she was scared that she wouldn’t feel anything anymore and she was scared that she would forget. So when that quiet, slow, devastating pain came again, she leaned into it and let it cut and pierce as she cried, because for as long as she felt that, she would remember that it had been real and she would know that it had been good.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i'm writing taz balance fic in the year of our lord 2020. no i'm not taking questions.


End file.
